Dome of Many-Coloured Glass | Page 3

the 1912 (original) edition.]
A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass
by?Amy Lowell
"Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,?Stains the white radiance of Eternity."
Shelley, "Adonais".
"Le silence est si grand que mon coeur en frissonne,?Seul, le bruit de mes pas sur le pave resonne."
Albert Samain.
Contents
Lyrical Poems
Before the Altar?Suggested by the Cover of a Volume of Keats's Poems?Apples of Hesperides?Azure and Gold?Petals?Venetian Glass?Fatigue?A Japanese Wood-Carving?A Little Song?Behind a Wall?A Winter Ride?A Coloured Print by Shokei?Song?The Fool Errant?The Green Bowl?Hora Stellatrix?Fragment?Loon Point?Summer?"To-morrow to Fresh Woods and Pastures New"?The Way?Diya {original title is Greek, Delta-iota-psi-alpha}?Roads?Teatro Bambino. Dublin, N. H.?The Road to Avignon?New York at Night?A Fairy Tale?Crowned?To Elizabeth Ward Perkins?The Promise of the Morning Star?J--K. Huysmans?March Evening
Sonnets
Leisure?On Carpaccio's Picture: The Dream of St. Ursula?The Matrix?Monadnock in Early Spring?The Little Garden?To an Early Daffodil?Listening?The Lamp of Life?Hero-Worship?In Darkness?Before Dawn?The Poet?At Night?The Fruit Garden Path?Mirage?To a Friend?A Fixed Idea?Dreams?Frankincense and Myrrh?From One Who Stays?Crepuscule du Matin?Aftermath?The End?The Starling?Market Day?Epitaph in a Church-Yard in Charleston, South Carolina?Francis II, King of Naples?To John Keats
The Boston Athenaeum
The Boston Athenaeum
Verses for Children
Sea Shell?Fringed Gentians?The Painted Ceiling?The Crescent Moon?Climbing?The Trout?Wind?The Pleiades
Thanks are due to the editor of the `Atlantic Monthly',?and to Messrs. G. Schirmer, Inc., for their courteous permission to reprint certain of these poems which have been copyrighted by them. [All these copyrights are now expired.]
Lyrical Poems
Before the Altar
Before the Altar, bowed, he stands?With empty hands;?Upon it perfumed offerings burn?Wreathing with smoke the sacrificial urn.?Not one of all these has he given,?No flame of his has leapt to Heaven?Firesouled, vermilion-hearted,?Forked, and darted,?Consuming what a few spare pence?Have cheaply bought, to fling from hence?In idly-asked petition.
His sole condition?Love and poverty.?And while the moon?Swings slow across the sky,?Athwart a waving pine tree,?And soon?Tips all the needles there?With silver sparkles, bitterly?He gazes, while his soul?Grows hard with thinking of the poorness of his dole.
"Shining and distant Goddess, hear my prayer?Where you swim in the high air!?With charity look down on me,?Under this tree,?Tending the gifts I have not brought,?The rare and goodly things?I have not sought.?Instead, take from me all my life!
"Upon the wings?Of shimmering moonbeams?I pack my poet's dreams?For you.?My wearying strife,?My courage, my loss,?Into the night I toss?For you.?Golden Divinity,?Deign to look down on me?Who so unworthily?Offers to you:?All life has known,?Seeds withered unsown,?Hopes turning quick to fears,?Laughter which dies in tears.?The shredded remnant of a man?Is all the span?And compass of my offering to you.
"Empty and silent, I?Kneel before your pure, calm majesty.?On this stone, in this urn?I pour my heart and watch it burn,?Myself the sacrifice; but be?Still unmoved: Divinity."
From the altar, bathed in moonlight,?The smoke rose straight in the quiet night.
Suggested by the Cover of a Volume of Keats's Poems
Wild little bird, who chose thee for a sign?To put upon the cover of this book??Who heard thee singing in the distance dim,?The vague, far greenness of the enshrouding wood,?When the damp freshness of the morning earth?Was full of pungent sweetness and thy song?
Who followed over moss and twisted roots,?And pushed through the wet leaves of trailing vines?Where slanting sunbeams gleamed uncertainly,?While ever clearer came the dropping notes,?Until, at last, two widening trunks disclosed?Thee singing on a spray of branching beech,?Hidden, then seen; and always that same song?Of joyful sweetness, rapture incarnate,?Filled the hushed, rustling stillness of the wood?
We do not know what bird thou art. Perhaps?That fairy bird, fabled in island tale,?Who never sings but once, and then his song?Is of such fearful beauty that he dies?From sheer exuberance of melody.
For this they took thee, little bird, for this?They captured thee, tilting among the leaves,?And stamped thee for a symbol on this book.?For it contains a song surpassing thine,?Richer, more sweet, more poignant. And the poet?Who felt this burning beauty, and whose heart?Was full of loveliest things, sang all he knew?A little while, and then he died; too frail?To bear this untamed, passionate burst of song.
Apples of Hesperides
Glinting golden through the trees,?Apples of Hesperides!?Through the moon-pierced warp of night?Shoot pale shafts of yellow light,?Swaying to the kissing breeze?Swings the treasure, golden-gleaming,?Apples of Hesperides!
Far and lofty yet they glimmer,?Apples of Hesperides!?Blinded by their radiant shimmer,?Pushing forward just for these;?Dew-besprinkled, bramble-marred,?Poor duped mortal, travel-scarred,?Always thinking soon to seize?And possess the golden-glistening?Apples of Hesperides!
Orbed, and glittering, and pendent,?Apples of Hesperides!?Not one missing, still transcendent,?Clustering like a swarm of bees.?Yielding to no man's desire,?Glowing with a saffron fire,?Splendid, unassailed, the golden?Apples of Hesperides!
Azure and Gold
April had covered the hills?With flickering yellows and reds,?The sparkle and coolness of snow?Was blown from the mountain beds.
Across a deep-sunken stream?The pink of blossoming trees,?And from windless appleblooms?The humming of many bees.
The air was of rose and gold?Arabesqued with the song of birds?Who, swinging unseen under leaves,?Made music more eager than words.
Of a sudden, aslant the road,?A brightness to dazzle and stun,?A glint of the bluest blue,?A flash from a sapphire sun.
Blue-birds so blue, 't was a dream,?An impossible, unconceived hue,?The